Green Options

In one of his first moves upon taking office, President Obama has ordered a freeze on all new or pending regulations from the Bush administration.

Despite the news yesterday that the wolf population in Yellowstone has decreased 27%, the Bush administration said today that they will remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list in the Midwest and in the area surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

The Bush administration has tried to remove the wolves’ federal protections twice before, once in the Great Lakes and once in the northern Rockies, which includes Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. Federal judges revoked both rule changes in February and September of last year.

After completing its annual wolf population estimate, Yellowstone National Park has announced that the number of wolves inside the park has declined by 27% since the end of 2007. 124 wolves are now thought to reside in the park, down from 171. Is this a normal fluctuation?

A new study in the journal BMC Ecology indicates that coastal wolves in British Columbia switch to eating salmon in the fall as a primary food source, rather than deer. Scientists arrived at this conclusion after analyzing wolf poop they collected over a four year span.

Among the thousands of stools that were collected by the researchers in the spring and summer months, 90-95% of them contained some indications that wolves were eating deer as prey. In the fall, however, this number dropped significantly. About 40-70% of the stools in this time of year indicated that wolves were dining on salmon.

So what’s the big deal?

Editor’s note: The fourth part of the “Human Interaction with Nature” series takes a look at efforts to recover endangered animal species. This post was written by Denzyl Janneker, and originally published on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Baraboo, Wisconsin and Basra, Iraq might have nothing in common, but fighting a war and killing endangered species has prompted a common human response - to do an about turn and nurture that which we have destroyed.

Baraboo is known for efforts in saving its whooping crane population, while Basra is emerging from the ashes of war with a skyline dotted with cranes, symbolizing the reconstruction and development initiatives under way. At least that’s the intention. Two words stand out in either respect: Reconstruction and reintroduction.

Wars aside, what is it about man’s insatiable desire to kill animals, whether it’s for hides, horns or a hunter’s trophy? If only animals were like humans, they’d be completely cynical and sarcastic:

“Well, sir you might as just save me the trouble of running off into the bush and hiding. So load your bolt-action rifle and oh, don’t worry about the telescopic sight since I’m just going to be a few feet away. And when my head’s mounted above your fireplace in say 10 or 20 years from now, you can brag to your guests what a tough contest it was.”

A radio-collared wolf from Idaho has made her home in Northeastern Oregon rekindling hope for a future wolf population in the state. The area was once home to a thriving population of wolves that was eradicated in the 1930s.